If Amazon is so cutthroat why do people choose to work there?
Originally written for Quora.
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As of this writing I was only at Amazon for 2.5 years, but I've noticed one main thing that I have in common with current & former Amazonians.
We value ownership, to a degree that most people don't understand, and Amazon enables the hell out of people like us. I think the best way to explain this is to use my own experience as an example. As an entry-level, first-job-out-of-college hire in Amazon's retail business, I was planning and executing marketing campaigns with six- or seven-figure budgets. What I mean by that is: I pulled my own data to look for opportunities, I came up with the strategy and how it fit into our greater plan for the fiscal year, I modeled impact scenarios, I pitched it to the vendor's VP-level leaders, I negotiated contract terms and approvals, I planned & managed execution of the creative, I wrote copy, I coded the campaigns and managed deployment, I coordinated the campaign with centralized marketing orgs, I monitored performance and made adjustments, I analyzed and reported on performance to the vendor and my team, etc. etc. I took all the credit and blame.
When I say "I" did those things, I mean exactly that: I did them, by myself, with very little supervision.
If I didn't know how to do something, I taught myself or asked a peer a very-specific question, like "what does this Oracle error mean?" as opposed to "what strategy will work best for these products?" I had almost no formal training in how to do any of it and was doing this as early as 3 months on the job. The entire list of stuff I described above could be self-executed in a week on top of my regular work, maybe two weeks if I was really busy.
I tell you this not to toot my own horn, because frankly I'm only partly responsible for it.
Amazon gives you the tools. The main reason I was able to do all of the above independently is because I had the right tools to do it. Amazon self-authors extremely powerful tools for everything from promotions to content management to SEM. Amazon cares a lot about scaling employee impact to keep headcount low; power is a happy side effect. How many companies give entry-level employees access to not only understand sensitive financial information, but the ability to directly influence it?
Amazon gives you permission. There are rules, of course, but there's a minimum of red tape compared to most comparably-sized companies.
Amazon centralizes the right functions, to concentrate & scale domain expertise where it's vital. For example, as a marketer I had a high level of flexibility over how to execute email programs—but my programs were built on best practices collected from the company, choosing from templates that have been rigorously tested, choosing from send cadences determined to be optimal, customizing targeting algorithms designed by people much smarter than me.
Amazon hires other extremely competent, trustworthy people and empowers them, too. Because I knew how competent & trustworthy my peers were, I had a high degree of confidence in their work. That minimized the time I spent checking things, or repeating exercises, or deeply debating decisions. Because I knew my peers had similar levels of ownership, I trusted that they would take credit/responsibility where they deserved it, and share it with me where I deserved it.
Amazon does a better-than-average job of rewarding work on a merit basis. I think a lot of current and former Amazonians would disagree with me on this point, but I have two reasons for feeling this way. First, because of all the promotions I saw happen, for 99% of them my response was "that makes sense, that person deserved it and I'm glad to see them getting recognized." Second, because the accompanying increases in compensation border on ludicrous.
In this way, Amazon is like working for a small startup, but with top-tier corporate compensation and risk. It's possible to, within 4 years of graduating from college, be managing people and making in excess of $150k/year. Without a STEM degree. Without an advanced degree. Without SFBay living costs.
Here's the thing: if your priorities in life include things like work/life balance or respect for seniority, then Amazon will probably sound toxic to you, and any "benefits" will seem specious at best. That's good, because you would probably be miserable working there! But if you care more about accomplishing things, Amazon is a crack-fueled joy ride of empowerment and recognition. I loved it, and although I ultimately chose to leave, if I was redoing my life I would still choose to work for Amazon when I did.
Aside: I didn't read The Everything Store until I'd left the company. But as I read about the joys and pains, from the founding until the modern era, I felt a deep sense of camaraderie with my Amazonian peers. The book read to me like a love song, because even the criticisms reflect what Amazon has chosen for itself.